


No Matter

by Dulcinea



Category: Metallica
Genre: Angst and Drama, Cheating, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-15
Updated: 2020-09-15
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:42:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,722
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26479672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dulcinea/pseuds/Dulcinea
Summary: They hadn't seen James in a while, so who else would know where he was, but Lars? Load era fic.
Relationships: James Hetfield/Jason Newsted, James Hetfield/Lars Ulrich
Comments: 1
Kudos: 12





	No Matter

“Have you seen him?”

Lars looked up from his papers. “Hm?”

Their tour manager Tony frowned. He shook his head, disappearing around the frame. The door soon shut after.

He busied himself with the potential setlist changes for tonight, when the door opened again, and Brian stuck his head in. “Have you seen him?”

“Who?”

Brian, another crew member, also frowned. “You don’t know?”

Lars lifted up the pile of papers on his lap. “This answer your question?”

“Right.” And Brian’s head receded away too, the door slamming closed.

“Okay.” The papers ended up on the floor. Lars reached for the door knob. “The hell is going on?”

Kirk even gave him a weird look when he asked. “James isn’t here.”

“So? He’s probably hung over—”

“He’s not at the hotel either.”

“Big whoop. Someone paged him?”

“Nothing.”

“Tried Jason?”

“He’s not here either—”

“And there’s your answer.” He turned on his heel, waving over his shoulder. “See you later tonight.”

But when Jason showed up thirty minutes later, he was James-less. And clueless too. “He wasn’t with me at all yesterday,” he told Lars. “We went for drinks, he went to his room early and that’s the last I saw of him.”

“Shit.”

“You mean he isn’t here?” Jason’s eyes grew wide. “Does Tony know?”

“Tony knew before I did.”

“Oh. Crap.”

“Shut up.” He turned away from Jason, raking a hand through his hair, ruining the style he spent minutes on. “Fuck.” Gel squished between his fingers. It made smudges on his black shorts when he slapped it on his thigh. “Fuck. What the fuck is he doing?”

“I don’t know.”

“I know you don’t know. No one fucking knows. I don’t fucking know.”

“It’ll be okay, man. It's just James being James…”

_So you say._ He left the dressing room, elbowing past Kirk on the way out. Whatever Kirk said fell on deaf ears.

Finding Tony wasn’t a problem. Habits meant patterns, and all arenas had the same necessities for bands, despite size, color and carpet changes. Inside the arena’s main office, with Tony facing the arena owners, Lars said, “Stall as long as you can. I’m getting James.” And he shut the door before any of them could answer.

_I don’t have time to play Private Eye, Hetfield._ He hailed a taxi down, barking out the address for the hotel. _What the fuck are you doing?_

The front desk had no answers when he arrived. Neither did the bartender. Security proved to be a wasted bust too, just like housekeeping. And the hot blond chick Lars remembered James oogling the night before, the same one Lars made fun of on general principle, only laughed in Lars’s face.

He sent James a page: CALL ME ASAP. LARS.

What the front desk could provide were numbers. Local bars, strip joints, tattoo parlors, gun ranges, car dealerships, anything James would go to. Anything that might help.

Nothing did. Not a single one.

“I need the spare key to Hetfield’s room now,” he told the concierge, and a copy was provided without delay.

There had to be answers there. Maybe a pamphlet of something cool and dangerous to see nearby. Like an airplane show. Monster truck rally. Rodeo, fishing, whatever it was. Maybe a note he left behind that no one saw. Something. Anything.

He found James’s room in the normal shape he was used to: a messy bed, clothes strewn across the floor, toiletries and hygiene essentials all over the television counter, empty crushed beer cans, empty pizza boxes, porn mags and a bottle of lube. But no hints. No note. Nothing to tell Lars where James could’ve gone to, what he could’ve done, why even.

James disappeared. James went up and disappeared.

Lars settled back into a chair, his head falling into his hands.

He sighed hard, rubbing his face. James.

A few minutes later, he received a page, unfortunately from Tony. FOUND HIM?

One minute later, Tony replied to his ‘no.’ POSTPONED FOR 30 MINS.

Ten minutes later: YOU CAN CANCEL IF NEED BE.

Lars paged back: NO.

He stayed glued to the chair, watching the time go by on the bedside clock, sitting adjacent to him in the room. Ten minutes. Twenty. Twenty-five. Thirty. At forty, rain started pattering on the room windows and balcony. At an hour in, the rain intensified. Half an hour passed, and the rain let up some. It had ended completely when Lars woke up from an abrupt nap two hours in.

And Lars froze at the sound of the hotel door opening.

Keys rattled. Boots stomped. The door shut.

_Squish, squish, squish._

In the doorway to James’s bedroom stood James himself, drenched and muddied from head-to-toe, skin pale, eyes bloodshot.

“Fucking hell.” Lars jumped up from the chair, crossing over to him. “You look like death.”

James frowned as he approached. “What’re you doing here?”

“I should be the one asking that, asshole. The fuck were you?”

“Walking.”

“In the goddamn forest or some shit?”

“Sorta. There was a swamp nearby.”

“So you went.”

“Yeah.”

“Jason and you have a fight?”

James’s lips pursed.

“You…” Lars shook his head. “Forget it. Now isn’t the time.”

“What is it?”

“We have a gig—”

“What’d you want to say?”

“Something we can talk about later.” He walked around James, heading to bathroom. “Let’s get you cleaned up some and get to the arena, okay?”

Inside, Lars reached for a big, white towel. From the doorway, James said, “It was you.”

“Me what?”

“Jason hates you.”

“And water is wet. Feeling’s mutual, but you both know that.”

“Lars…”

“No, James.” Lars turned sharp on his heel, towel hugged to his chest with both arms. “We don’t have time. We have a gig.”

“He doesn’t—”

“And the shit that happened between the two of us is history—”

“Jason—”

“—and stays history between the two of us. We agreed on that.”

“I know.”

“So, for the last time, I don’t care that you’re with Jason now and that you have been with him for a year. I don’t care that you went with him behind my back. Hell, I did the same to you with Kirk and a bunch of others, so we’re even, alright? As long as we can co-exist with Metallica—”

“Jason cheated on me.”

The towels fell from Lars’s arms, piling up over his feet.

From inside the bathroom, the rain sounded muffled, soft drops instead of the fat ones they should’ve been, knocking on the windows rather than slamming them down.

In the doorway, James swayed in place.

Lars took a few tentative steps forward. The towels slid across the floor.

The closer he came, the more he noticed the black circles around James’s bloodshot eyes, the pale skin even pale underneath the bathroom light. His fingertips grazed James’s cold skin, and he watched James collapse in front of him—knees bending, arms swinging around his body, head lolling forward and burying into the crook of his neck, and Lars returned the embrace, holding James up with all his strength, his cheek pressed to the side of James’s head.

One hand slid up James’s spine to weave into his hair. He rubbed his cheek against James’s head, lips brushing James’s ear as he whispered.

“Thank God you’re okay.”

James’s answered back with a hard squeeze to his torso.

They arrived back to the arena in time for only an hour postponement. The crowd all went home happy, forgetting about the little hiccup in the beginning. No one from the crew bugged him nor James for an explanation. From the way Lars hovered by James’s side, just like he had back in Montreal, they knew better. Kirk knew better.

Jason, especially, should’ve known better. “Hey.” He poked his head into the doorway of the dressing room. “James still here?”

In the far back corner, Lars sat on the bench beside James, both wearing towels over their laps, wet from shower. James didn’t meet Jason’s eye. Lars did and said, “Yeah. We’re leaving soon.”

“Oh cool, because—”

“We’ll see you later.”

Jason’s enthusiasm died with his soft “oh.” His mouth shut. His eyes looked them over. For once today, Lars enjoyed watching someone frown at him. “I see.”

“Yeah. You see.”

The age-old jealous Lars pin-pointed back in the 80s showed in Jason’s scowl. The bitterness of today emerged in Jason’s farewell snap: “Not surprised.”

Things rattled from Jason’s door slam. A quiet hum filled up the room in its wake.

Lars’s hand settled onto James’s thigh.

He turned his head and found James looking at him with the same shy smile that stole his heart back in the 80s. “Thank you.”

“Of course.” He squeezed James’s thigh. “No matter what happened, I’d still be there for you. Remember?”

James’s hand slowly settled over his. “Yeah.” He squeezed it.

Lars smiled back.

Their fingers wiggled around and around until they twined and settled down onto the bench between them, warm palm pressing onto warm palm.

It wasn't until years passed, complete with fights and alcohol and lots of information spilled out in front of dual cameras and a boom mic, that Lars learned the truth: Jason "cheated." Cheated by wanting to play new music, wanting to create his own things, wanting to escape the stranglehold that was James Hetfield. Maybe it was real that James caught Jason kissing and feeling up a few guys here and there. Maybe it was the truth that Jason wanted not just out of James's control but out from James. By that point, Lars didn't know, didn't care and didn't want this anymore, because everything he knew fell apart the second Jason walked away, and within what felt like seconds of that, James walked out too, right to rehab. 

The uncertainty killed. The silence too. There was a small chance of hope, all based on James coming back to Jason and Jason accepting him and things between them finally being okay, because there was no chance in hell that Jason was coming back to the band. And maybe there was zero chance James was coming back either, a prospect that terrified everyone, especially Lars.

But Lars knew where he would be, no matter the outcome. He would be there, by James's side, waiting. His own personal penance for past transgressions.

**Author's Note:**

> Old fic. I had the sudden urge two days ago to write Metallica fanfiction, which I haven't in YEARS, so I figured I would go back and do what I was doing -- which was transferring every single fic I had written over to AO3 and to finish writing every fic I ever started (and there was a lot). This story in particular was written a long time ago (2012) and I added on a few more to this one-shot.


End file.
